Modern Mac N Cheese

This was real­ly fun to do. A dear friend of mine has “camp” at her house for a week dur­ing the sum­mer with her four grand­chil­dren. They do enjoy cook­ing and she asked me if I could do a cook­ing class for them. We were hav­ing a hard time get­ting our times to mesh, so we decid­ed on a video class with me visu­al­ly tak­ing them through the recipe I sent to them that they were going to pre­pare. Here I am, cell phone in hand, walk­ing, talk­ing and stir­ring through Mod­ern Mac N Cheese!

https://​www​.youtube​.com/​w​a​t​c​h​?​v​=​Z​_​e​v​A​O​d​i​PUE

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Modern Mac N Cheese

Fresh Veg­eta­bles and Pas­ta in a light, zesty Cheese Sauce

Author Liz Geeslin

Ingredients

• 2 cups roti­ni pas­ta Bar­il­la Plus is my favorite
• 1/​2 cup car­rot diced
• 2 cups broc­coli florets
• 1 small zuc­chi­ni diced
• 1 cup peas frozen
• 1 cup cot­tage cheese
• 1 table­spoon Dijon mus­tard
• 1/​4 tea­spoon hot pep­per sauce
• salt and pep­per to taste
• 1 cup Ched­dar cheese grat­ed
• 1 cup Mon­terey Jack cheese grat­ed

Instructions

• Pre­pare all the ingre­di­ents: Dice the veg­eta­bles, mea­sure out the pas­ta and cheeses.
• Cook pas­ta in large saucepan of boil­ing salt­ed water for 4 minutes. 
  
• Add car­rots and cook 2 min­utes. Add broc­coli and cook 2 min­utes longer. 
  
• Drain pas­ta and veg­eta­bles, reserv­ing 1/​2 cup of the cook­ing liquid. 
  
• Return pas­ta and veg­eta­bles to saucepan. Add zuc­chi­ni and peas. 
  
• Blend the cot­tage cheese with an immer­sion blender or small food proces­sor, just until smooth. 
  
• Then add the reserved pas­ta cook­ing water, mus­tard, hot pep­per sauce and blend briefly. 
• Stir into the pas­ta and veg­eta­bles. Sea­son with salt and pepper. 
• Mix in ched­dar and Mon­terey jack cheeses, stir­ring to combine.
• If eat­ing imme­di­ate­ly, warm gen­tly on the stove top or can be eat­en room tem­per­a­ture, even cold!
• If freez­ing, cool and pack­age for the freezer.